HOCKEN LIBRARY TO GET 1808 MARSDEN LETTER

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29070, 5 December 1959, Page 10

HOCKEN LIBRARY TO GET 1808 MARSDEN LETTER

Establishment Of Christian

Mission In N.Z.

[From the Londoy Correspondent of “The Press’’] LONDON, November 21. J£XACTLY 150 years after the Rev. Samuel Marsden was sailing from England with two craftsman missionaries, the faded, seven-page lettei’ in which he proposed the establishment of a Christian mission in New Zealand is to be sent to the Dominion after lying overlooked in the archives of the Church Missionary Society in London.

Marsden wrote the letter to the society in 1808 while he was visiting Britain. It resulted six years later in the first permanent settlement by Europeans in New Zealand, and in it Marsden envisaged the consequent interest of the British Government in the support and protection of New Zealand settlers.

The letter was extracted from the records of the society by the New Zealand collector, Mr Ken Webster. Now this prime document in the history of New Zealand settlement, and 14 other letters written after it, will join the extensive collection of Marsden’s journals and letters, and books, newspapers, pamphlets and manuscripts relating to him in the Hocken Library, Dunedin. Marsden wrote the letter on March 24, 1808, at the residence of a Miss Arneys, where he was lodging, at No. 8 Ivy Lane, now only a track across the bombed waste in the shadow of St Paul’s Cathedral. He addressed it to the Rev. Josiah Pratt, secretary of the society, then named the Society for Missions to Africa and the East. It is written on both sides of two folded sheets of gilt-edged paper and runs to seven of the eight available pages. The society’s reply was followed two weeks later by a further letter expanding the proposal. This too is among the 15 letters Mr Webster will send to Dunedin in the next few days, though it is not in Marsden’s own hand and is signed by him in pencil. Both letters are well preserved, if begrimed at the edges, and are unharmed by being stitched and gummed into letter books. TTiese books were broken up when the society began the reclassification of its archives after World War 11.

Unlike the later letters which Marsden wrote from Australia, these have almost certainly never been published and both are free from the editorial marks that appear on subsequent letters. Letters Missed Dr. T. M. Hocken of Dunedin, who died in 1910 after devoting many years of his life to collecting Marsden papers in New Zealand, Australia and Britain, visi-. ted London and the Church Missionary Society in 1903. He mined deep into the archives of the

society, sifting through a mountain of New Zealand correspondence. Then, after much negotiation, he returned to New Zealand with virtually all the letters concerning New Zealand that Marsden wrote to the society from abroad. What he apparently overlooked were the precious few letters which Marsden wrote while in Britain and which were “filed,” not in the stacks of brown paper parcels containing letters from missionaries throughout Africa, India and the Pacific, but among local correspondence. It was only because almost every other item of Marsden material was already in New Zealand that the society felt it could part with these remaining, valued letters. In return, arrangements have been made in Dunedin for supplying the society with microfilms of all tha journals and letters which originally came from its offices. These amount to some 2500 sides of manuscript. Mr Webster hit on the idea of searching for further letters when he began five years ago to scour the society’s basement in the hope of finding a copy of the first book of printed Maori, a book of lessons for “the Natives” in an early form of written Maori. Marsden had the book printed in Sydney in 1815 and the only known copy is in the Auckland Museum. Dur-

ing the search, carried on over five years, Mr Webster sorted through the whole New Zealand section of the society’s papers. The earliest letters among the Marsden correspondence to be deposited by Mr Ken Webster in the Hocken Library were written during Marsden’s visit to Britain

from November, 1807, to August, 1809, after he had spent 12 years as assistant chaplain and then chaplain to the colony of New South Wales.

In the initial letter to the Church Missionary Society on March 24, 1808, Marsden sets out

his reasons for believing “the island” of New Zealand would “afford some prospect for missionary labours.” He argues that a New South Wales Governor, “however profane he may be” would be bound to protect the venture, and Marsden impresses on the society the need for proper supplies and communications. Before he left England, Marsden had the assurance of the Minister for the Colonies that the mission would have'official support. Other letters concern the recruiting of men to establish the New Zealand mission. The last written by Marsden before he left again for New South Wales in the ship Ann mentions the embarkation of the two artisian missionaries, William Hall, a carpenter, and John King, a ropemaker. Writing in Cowes Roads while awaiting a favourable wind

to sail, Marsden reports some “nonsense” with the captain over getting his livestock aboard. These were five Merino sheep given by George 111 himself to improve the breed in the colony. Little could that master have suspected that he might be impairing the future economy of Australia. A letter to the Rev. Josiah Pratt, written on his return to his home at Parramatta, "tells how Marsden heard on reaching the colony that the ship Boyd had been burned and the captain and crew massacred at Whangaroa. That calamity put an end for the time being to the mission plans; and also, Marsden reports, to a venture by a group of Port Jackson merchants to set up a trading station in New Zealand. A ship was ready to sail to launch this scheme, which would have vastly altered the course of early New Zealand history, when the massacre news reached the colony. ■the letter of March 24, 1808, does not represent Marsden’s first thoughts on a New Zealand mission. His interest in the Maori race was kindled almost as soon as he arrived in Australia. And after he had met several Maoris who visited Port Jackson he convinced himself that a mission should be started. His mind was quite made up when he left for England in 1807, and he put the idea to the secretary of the mission society when he arrived in London. This letter did mark, however, the first time he addressed the society, “with great diffidence” as he said, in writing.